NY: WHY KEEPING PEOPLE WITH SEX OFFENSE CONVICTIONS OFF SOCIAL MEDIA SITES DOES LITTLE TO MAKE THOSE SITES SAFE

Last month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a legislative proposal billed as a way to “prevent convicted sex offenders from using social media accounts, dating apps and video game chat functions to exploit children.”

But Cuomo’s proposal would do little to stop sexual harm on these platforms—and would most likely undermine public safety by creating a false sense of security that plays on popular myths about sexual violence.

Instead, it would simply make it more difficult for people who have been held accountable for a crime to reintegrate into society.

The proposal would make it a crime for people with prior sex crime convictions to misrepresent themselves online, and would require that they disclose their “internet identifiers” to authorities who, in turn, provide that information to social media platforms to potentially exclude them from their user base. full opinion piece